Waterboarding Rocks!

[MikeSun5]

It is just fun locking claustrophobics in coffins for days at a time. Sure they tend to come out insane but there is nothing wrong with driving people insane.

Actually, I don't remember anyone saying it was fun. And where did you read they tend to come out insane? Also, your argument would mean solitary confinement in prisons is torture. I've said many times that it's very mean, but I don't believe using fear is torture. My opinion may be "at odds with the law," but apparently not if waterboarding and confinement are being used.

How far do you want to push the fear thing? Would you have no problem, say, with pulling the suspect out in front of a firing squad and firing blanks at him? Or putting his wife and children out in front of a firing squad and firing blanks at them? After all, all you are causing is fear.

How about severe sleep deprivation? All it causes is brain damage. Or electric shock? It causes no physical scars, only pain. Is that the standard that you want?

Firing blanks wouldn't make any sense. The fear is the threat of dying, drowning, etc. You're second scenerio is just crazy. Attacking a suspect's loved ones is illegal. They're not being interrogated. I've said before that I think ALL physical trauma is torture, so your last 3 questions are not relevant.

This point keeps being brought up and ignored: What is interrogation but exploitation of fear? Some techniques are obviously more violent and extreme, but the suspects they're used upon are also more violent and extreme.
Besides, I haven't heard any suggestions for effective methods of interrogation that don't involve mental stress at all. The UN definition says "severe" mental stress, but who decides what's severe? If I'm claustrophobic, waterboarding may be less stressful for me than confinement. So the issue then boils down to the severity of the stress and each suspects individual phobias. If I had a good enough lawyer, I could claim torture for damn near anything.

 

[applecorped]

All physical trauma is torture?

 

[The Fool]

All physical trauma is torture?

Seem a reasonable statement to me, what else would you call it? Of course it depends on the context.....smacking a child to stop them picking their nose in public may not be torture......but used in interrogation, I don't see what else it could be.

 

[MikeSun5]

All physical trauma is torture?

In the context of interrogation, yes... infliction of physical pain to get info is not cool.
...but I think I get what you're getting at. Waterboarding = physical trauma, right? Like I said the previous post: eye of the beholder.

 

[applecorped]

Seem a reasonable statement to me, what else would you call it? Of course it depends on the context.....smacking a child to stop them picking their nose in public may not be torture......but used in interrogation, I don't see what else it could be.

May not be? It isn't.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

All physical trauma is torture?

No. The laws I've cited clearly spell out when it is torture. It must be a government agent intentionally inflicting severe pain, mental or physical, for the purpose of extracting information or confession, or for punishment.

The U.S. Code even specifically says that one of the kinds of mental pain is the the threat of imminent death. Waterboarding definitely fits the criteria.

Not all physical trauma does.

ETA: I addressed this form of argument in one or more of the other torture threads (the insect one for sure). It's basically trying to say that waterboarding isn't torture because waterboarding is similar to X (where X is something obviously not torture). I made the analogy that it would be like saying that 5 is not a prime because it is similar to 15 (an odd number that is a multiple of 5) and we know for sure that 15 is not a prime. The way to determine whether 5 is a prime is to see if it fulfills the requirements of a prime number.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Well there are chemical means of interrogation that are completely painless and do not cause mental harm BUT that is also defined as "torture".

The U.S. Code says that it is in fact one form of mental pain:

(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;

 

[MikeSun5]

ETA: I addressed this form of argument in one or more of the other torture threads (the insect one for sure). It's basically trying to say that waterboarding isn't torture because waterboarding is similar to X (where X is something obviously not torture). I made the analogy that it would be like saying that 5 is not a prime because it is similar to 15 (an odd number that is a multiple of 5) and we know for sure that 15 is not a prime. The way to determine whether 5 is a prime is to see if it fulfills the requirements of a prime number.

The form of argument is valid when X is something that can be considered torture under the current UN definition. My argument (and I think some of the others ) contends the UN term "severe mental stress" is too vague, thereby enormously diminishing capacity to get information from a suspect.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

The form of argument is valid when X is something that can be considered torture under the current UN definition. My argument (and I think some of the others ) contends the UN term "severe mental stress" is too vague, thereby enormously diminishing capacity to get information from a suspect.

That's not the argument I'm talking about. X in this case was "any physical trauma". Any physical trauma does not satisfy the definition of torture.

In previous examples of this same argument people used (for what I'm calling X) a boy throwing a bug at his sister and the severe mental suffering that can accompany the mere fact of incarceration (specifically ruled out in the definition).

As I've shown, by the definition, "any physical torture", a boy throwing a bug at his sister, and the severe mental pain incidental to incarceration CANNOT be considered torture under the legal definition. (By the way, the CAT was signed and ratified by the U.S. and is therefore part of U.S. law. Further, we have the U.S. Code that gives a compatible definition.)

As for your claim that the U.N.'s definition of torture is vague, it might help if you actually read the U.N. Convention Against Torture. "Severe mental stress" is not part of it.

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

 

[MikeSun5]

As for your claim that the U.N.'s definition of torture is vague, it might help if you actually read the U.N. Convention Against Torture. "Severe mental stress" is not part of it.

Okay, you got me. I got a word wrong. I meant "suffering." I'll quote from your link and put the important bits in bold:

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed...

 

[BeAChooser]

Could you then please point out the article in the UN Convention Against Torture

That document also states:

No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

Yet, Obama has ordered that renditions will continue. Perhaps Holder should indict Obama as well?

 

[Brainster]

Well, no it isn't.

He discusses the empirical argument, of whether torture elicits useful information, and he says that we don't know.

Wrong. He admits that the techniques used elicited useful information. What he says we don't know is if other techniques could have elicited the same information.

 

[leftysergeant]

Actually, I don't remember anyone saying it was fun. And where did you read they tend to come out insane?

That has been pretty much an accepterds fact pf psychology since the 1960s, at least. I know it was brought up in some of the Psych and Special Ed classes I took in 1970-77. Sorry I can't cite a study right nopw, but sensory depravation can be used to induce a condition similar to schizophrenia. You start to halucinate after a while.

Also, your argument would mean solitary confinement in prisons is torture.

If it was solitary confinement in a dark cell with no variation in temperature and no sound, bloody well right it's torture, for the reason stated above.

Firing blanks wouldn't make any sense. The fear is the threat of dying, drowning, etc. You're second scenerio is just crazy. Attacking a suspect's loved ones is illegal.

I would like to see it made a capital offense to write an official policy allowing the mutilation of a child's testicles to make his father talk, as one sick little animal posing as a government lawyer is alledged to have done.

 

[leftysergeant]

According to Raychill Maddow, during the post WWII Tokyo Trials, Japanese soldiers were convicted and hanged for waterboarding allied prisoners.

Then it was illegal before that animal Yoo and the war criminal Rummy authorized it. They should both be taken out of the country in shackles.

 

[A'isha]

I have only one thing to say on this topic at this time.

Liberal thinking is going to get a lot of Americans killed some day in an event that could have been prevented.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

 

[BeAChooser]

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

So tell us. If you had in your custody a person who you knew with 100% certainty was involved in a plot to detonate a nuclear weapon in an American city ... a plot where the device was already in place ... a plot where you had just hours before it was set to go off ... and this person was likely to know the location of the device ... would you torture? Or would you in your high minded view of things just let several hundred thousand Americans die?

 

[TriskettheKid]

So tell us. If you had in your custody a person who you knew with 100% certainty was involved in a plot to detonate a nuclear weapon in an American city ... a plot where the device was already in place ... a plot where you had just hours before it was set to go off ... and this person was likely to know the location of the device ... would you torture? Or would you in your high minded view of things just let several hundred thousand Americans die?

I'll play along.

You submit him to torture. He lies. Bomb goes off. Several hundred thousand die.

You've now tortured a man who then lied. Your use of torture did not help, and several hundred thousand people are now dead.

Yay for hypothetical situations.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Yet, Obama has ordered that renditions will continue. Perhaps Holder should indict Obama as well?

Is that a tu quoque argument? Is it somehow supposed to excuse torture?

You might have touched on the exact reason why Obama is waffling on the issue of prosecutions. He should certainly be using the bully pulpit to call for prosecutions.

 

[Dr Adequate]

So tell us. If you had in your custody a person who you knew with 100% certainty was involved in a plot to detonate a nuclear weapon in an American city ... a plot where the device was already in place ... a plot where you had just hours before it was set to go off ... and this person was likely to know the location of the device ... would you torture? Or would you in your high minded view of things just let several hundred thousand Americans die?

Or suppose that you were not in a hypothetical situation.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

If you had in your custody a person who you knew with 100% certainty was involved in a plot to detonate a nuclear weapon in an American city ...

I reject this hypothetical as impossible.

I guess we "know with 100% certainty" the same way we knew about the WMDs in Iraq. (I believe the term used was "a slam dunk".)

Strange that we had such great intel on this plot but don't know the location of the device! You've got, I assume, testimony from someone inside the operation that this guy is involved and knows the location, but the person giving you that intel doesn't know the location. How do you know for certain he knows this is the right guy? Heck, even if the guy himself willingly volunteered the information that he's the mastermind of the plot, it's not unheard of for mentally unstable people to have delusions of grandeur and claim responsibility for such things when they were only peripherally involved or even bad-guy wannabes.

So how are we 100% certain? That's part of the reasoning, I think, that the C.A.T. specifically says that there is no circumstance whatsoever that may be used to justify torture.